The Internet has been widely used. In home, the Internet has also been required. Home network middleware techniques such as JINI and UPnP are provided, so that application programmers can control and manage devices installed in in-home network. Accordingly, users can control and manage electronic appliances and security systems in home.
In general, home devices may be classified into information device such as personal computers, facsimiles, scanners, and printers, A/V devices such TV sets, set top boxes, DVD players, VCRs, audios, camcorders, and home game machines, control device such as coffee makers, electric rice cookers, refrigerators, washing machines, microwave ovens, and digital cameras, and dummy devices such as remote controllers, interphones, sensors, and lamps.
In the home network, the various devices are connected to each other through USB, IEEE1394, phone lines, power lines, a wireless LAN, or Bluetooth. The devices in the home network constitute a plurality of sub networks. The device may operate on different hardware and software platforms. Therefore, in general, it is not easy to construct the home network.
Accordingly, as a method of constructing the home network, there has been proposed a scheme of constructing a virtual computing environment, that is, called middleware, common to the distributed devices and providing applications thereon.
The middleware is a kind of software for device communication between different types of devices in the home network.
In addition, the middleware is located between an operating system and application programs in order to clearly connect distributed applications and distributed data in a service client service server environment.
In other words, the middleware is a kind of software for implementing independent connection to hardware according to kinds of networks in order to supports various types of communication protocols, system structures, OSs, database, and application programs. As currently proposed middleware schemes for the home network, there are UPnP (Universal Plug and Play), HAVi (Home AV Interoperability), JINI, Home Wide Web, and the like.
Among them, although the HAVi utilizes separate protocol stacks designed based on IEEE1394, the HAVi is not sufficient for the internetworking. The UPnP and the JINI are used in layers under the TCP/IP protocol in order to implement the internetworking. The UPnP and the JINI are mainly used for the internetworking between the PCs and the PC peripherals. However, the UPnP and the JINI are not sufficient for real time data transmission (audio/video data transmission) between the digital electronic appliances.
As one of the middleware techniques, there is proposed the UPnP in the UPnP forum. The UPnP forum, founded on Oct. 18, 1999, is a community of about 200 companies of electronic appliances, computers, home automation, mobile devices, or the like. The UPnP forum defines and discloses standard recommendations for devices and services based on an Internet-based communication standard. The object of the UPnP forum is to easily construct the network for the devices in home or office and control the devices.
Currently, methods of controlling and managing devices of an in-home network by using the UPnP technique have proposed. In the control management system, the user interfaces, UPnP application program interfaces (hereinafter, referred to as API), and control points exist on a single system. Therefore, when the user executes a control command by using the user interface and the UPnP API in order to control a device, the control point actually controls the devices.
On the other hand, if an addition network administrator is not provided to the aforementioned home network, it is difficult for general users having less network knowledge to construct the network. Therefore, there is a need for a home network which can be easily constructed by the general users. In particular, techniques for controlling the client at the same time that the client is connected to the host are required.
In addition, web synchronization and PC synchronization techniques have been used in order to perform information processing and secure copyrights in multimedia devices such as mobile phones and MP3 players. In the techniques, the device driver, the control S/W, and application S/W are provided through separate storage media for example, CDs.
In this case, customers must connect the device to a PC or a host system and, after that, install device drivers, the control S/W, and application S/W. Next, a device deriver and control SW of the client, for example, a mobile phone or an MP3 player must be installed and set up.
In implementation of the PC synchronization of the client, there are problems of setup complexity and procedure difficulty. Although the aforementioned plug-and-play techniques may somewhat solve the problems, there is still a need for separate storage media for installing the device driver and the control S/W in the host.
In implantation of the web synchronization, there is a problem in that separate software must be installed to connect the web in addition to the aforementioned steps.
In order for the host to control the client through the communication compatible operation between the host and the client, the following steps and requirements must be satisfied.
(1) Physical communication interfaces for connection between the host and the client must be equal. For example, if the host is a USB plug type, the client must also be a USB plug type.
(2) Electrical communication signal systems of the host and the client must be basically equal.
(3) Logical communication data protocols of the host and the client must be equal.
(4) In order to the host to control the client, the device driver installed in the host must be compatible to the control protocol of the client.
(5) Command protocol of the client control S/W installed in the host must be equal to a client command protocol or a client device driver installed in the host.
(6) When a client based service is received from the host, a service software control and service protocol must be equal to a communication and control protocol of the client.
Conventionally, it is inconvenient for the user to directly install the protocol, the device driver, the control software, the service software for the client in the host in order to maintain compatibilities of the requirements (2) to (6) excluding the requirement (1).
Hereinafter, in the present invention, the protocols and the device drivers are collectively referred to as a device driver.